Steven Stamkos
The Tampa Bay Lightning built the foundation of their championship team through the draft and had to experience a lot of failure before reaching the top. The Flyers may be in the early stages of following the same blueprint.
With goals from Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point and Ondrej Palat, the Lightning scored two goals in the first and three in the second to cruise to a 5-2 win over the Dallas Stars in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday night, taking a 2-1 series lead in the process.
For Saturday’s Round Robin finale against the Tampa Bay Lightning, a battle that will be for the top seed in the Eastern Conference, both teams will be missing a key part of their offense. Jake Voracek will not be available for the Flyers. Steven Stamkos will be out for the Lightning.
The Flyers final game of a three-game road trip comes against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Much like the first meeting against the Lightning, Tampa enters as the hottest team in the league, currently on a nine-game winning streak, just as they were when they paid a visit to Philadelphia on Jan. 11.
The Flyers next opponent was one of the bigger disappointments in the NHL a month ago, but since then, the Tampa Bay Lightning have risen to second place in the Atlantic Division and sixth in the league in points, due in large part to a current nine-game winning streak that they will bring to Philadelphia on Saturday night.
The Flyers kept things rolling with back-to-back wins over the Detroit Red Wings over the weekend to improve to 12-2-1 in their last 15 games. They get a tough task on Tuesday at home, facing the NHL-leading Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Metropolitan Division, featuring Flyers captain Claude Giroux, came away victorious at the 2019 NHL All-Star Game in San Jose on Saturday night, defeating the Atlantic Division in the semi-finals and the Central Division in the championship game.
In almost a carbon copy of the first meeting between the two teams in November, the Flyers somehow managed a frantic rally to get the game tied after trailing by three goals and earn a point. But, yet again, they coughed up the chance at the second point almost immediately, as Alex Killorn scored 18 seconds into overtime to give the Lightning a 6-5 win on Thursday night.
The Flyers gave the Tampa Bay Lightning a run for their money in November, erasing a 5-1 lead in under seven minutes to force overtime, before ultimately suffering the defeat. Tampa has some help back in netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy and is also fresh off the break.
The opponent in this final game of the homestand is the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team atop the Eastern Conference standings and they bring a wealth of scoring into Philadelphia. Game time is at 1 p.m.
